‘Immature’ male students more likely to have to repeat the year than girls

Boy are up to three times more likely to have to repeat a year at uni due to “immaturity” and academic failure.

New info obtained by The Times found over the past five years the number of male undergrads told they have to repeat the year at a Russell Group university have shot up.

According to experts men are often lazier than women when it comes to exams and deadlines and are more likely to think they can wing it in their exams.

Sad man, posed by models

At Newcastle alone the number of boys who had to repeat the year between 2012 and 2013 was 118, a massive three times the amount of women repeating in the same year.

The same year at Cardiff 351 were held back compared to just 212 women.

The following year a massive 178 more male Cardiff students had to be held back.

Last year overall over 30 per cent more men than women had to repeat the year, with massive gender gaps at Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Exeter going up every year since 2009.

Now experts are even encouraging the staggering the starting age for men and women at university — to account for the possibility that men are underachieving simply because they’re less mature.

Experts at Glasgow say the “reading gap” disadvantaging men is now three times the size of the “maths gap” disadvantaging women.

Vivian Hill, director of Professional Educational Psychology training at UCL, says the shocking difference is partly down to the way male and female students worked.

She said: “Females are more likely to attend seminars and lectures, engage in regular patterns of study, plan for and complete assignments on time and have a better work ethic and more effective study skills.

“But males are more likely to engage in higher levels of risk-taking in their studies, to skip seminars and study in intense bursts.”

Even at Oxford, although the number of male students who had to repeat the year was low, it was still twice the number of female students.

Who knows how many years it took them to get to this point

Between 2009-2011 11 male students were forced to retake the year compared to just four female students.

Former Leeds professor David Lindley claims the gender gap is because girls are more likely to be realists and “have their heads screwed on more securely than many young men”.